


east of my youth, west of my future

by foldingcranes



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: M/M, Pining, Post-Hydra Steve, Road Trips, Secret Empire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-17 18:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13082280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foldingcranes/pseuds/foldingcranes
Summary: There are two sets of memories in Steve’s mind. Two lives lived.Are they equally real?Steve doesn't know anymore.





	east of my youth, west of my future

**Author's Note:**

  * For [msermesth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/msermesth/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, MsErmestH! I hope you enjoy your gift!

There are two sets of memories in Steve’s mind. Two lives lived.

Are they equally real?

Steve doesn't know anymore.

He remembers so clearly, watching Natasha fall and fall. Remembers the strong tang of blood, red all over his hands. The betrayal on Sharon's face.

The world turned upside down, all thanks to him.

It's over now. "It's not your fault," Carol says. Steve doesn't want to believe her. Doesn't want to hear all the platitudes, or stand the pitying looks. "Most of us have been there," they say. Like mind control happens every day, like everyone's going to have their turn at the mindfuck merry go round.

Steve has two sets of memories. Two lives. One is well lived, even when it turned sour. The other only involves destruction, and a betrayal of everything he is. Was.

He remembers his thoughts. The way his mind worked. His hands moving over his own chest, painting the symbol of betrayal. It makes Steve sick, a churning feeling taking over his gut, nauseous and lost.

Things will never be the same.

(He wants to forget. He wants to remember so it never repeats. He wants to leave all of the horror behind, but it's not like he deserves _that_.)

Steve mourns the person he used to be before his mind was taken apart and torn into shreds. The person he used to be before the world ended for him.

And after all the mindless destruction, after all the lack of control, after all the pain he's caused, the one constant in his mind is

Tony.

Oh, God. _Tony_.

They tell him Tony's been in a coma for months now, put there by none other than Carol. That he turned his (brilliant, wonderful) mind into an AI. That he… the other Steve, the evil one, turned the AI off, effectively destroying Tony's consciousness.

It's like they are trapped in a cycle of constantly damaging each other with no way out. There's no escape, only anger and violence and hurt feelings that tramp all over the good things they used to share.

The love they used to have for each other is soiled now, poisoned. All Steve feels for Tony is a strange mixture of anger, sadness and guilt. And so, so many regrets.

He thinks this is it, this is the end of them. This is where they stop being them, this is the death of everything they could have.

Until they tell him that Tony's body is gone from the chamber that held him.

"He's alive, Cap," Ironheart tells him. She's young and bright and she's been doing a splendid job. "Good luck finding him, because I don't think he wants to be found. He's taking a break."

Steve keeps quiet, and she speaks again. "No, I don't know where he went. No one knows."

And that's the thing, isn't it? Why would Tony want to disappear? What is he running from?

He must be hiding from Steve.

Does Tony know the things the other Steve did? The things he said?

Steve drags a hand down his face as soon as Ironheart is gone, slumping over his couch in his lonely apartment. He pulls at his hair, despairing about what to do.

His first instinct is to go looking for Tony. But they have hurt each other enough. If Tony doesn't want to be found, Steve should let him be.

Except.

Except Steve remembers a time where he used to know Tony, and Tony used to know him back. He knew Tony well enough to know that leaving him alone wouldn't be good for him. That a Tony who hides is a Tony who desperately needs help, but doesn't want to admit it.

The thing about Tony is that he tries to carry the entire world on his shoulders, until it's too much for him. Until the world breaks and spills all over him and he falls on his knees, defeated and alone. Last man standing.

Steve used to think that he could stand at Tony's side during those times. Until the war. And the mindwipe. Until they became no more than strangers, tired of hurting each other.

He's no fool. He doesn't expect Tony to forgive him for this-- why would he, when Steve didn't show him compassion during the time Tony was brainwashed by Red Skull?

All he remembers from that is the anger, and seeing Tony as the true monster he thought he was, forgetting all the _good_ things. Scrapping all the happy memories, and putting a lid on his love for him, hating Tony more than ever. I thought I was being proved right, Steve thinks, I thought that was the true version of him. At last.

He wonders if things could have been different between them. If he'll ever stop feeling a searing, blinding anger when he thinks about that Tony. When he thinks about the Tony that deleted his memories. When he thinks about the war.

For a long time, after their parted ways, after their love turned into ash and he /died/ and Tony became a stranger, all Steve had was his anger.

Steve's tired. He's done with being angry. He's done with the poison that runs through his veins. Every time he blinks, there's red on his hands.

Is this how Tony feels?

That same day, he grabs his helmet and hops on his bike. He doesn't say goodbye to anyone.

There's no one who will demand explanations, anyway. No one who will miss him.

The road before him is long and hard and full of secrets, but he's going to give it a try anyway. He's going to find Tony.

Steve's got nothing to lose now, and when the numbness lifts, when the anger lets him think just for a minute, there's only longing left. The worst has already happened, and now Tony and him stand on equal grounds.

(Guilty, broken, battered. Tired.)

The only thing that keeps Steve from stopping is the selfish desire for another chance. He probably doesn't deserve it. Hell, he doesn't even know if Tony wants to try again. If Tony would look at him the way he used to look at Steve when he loved him: full of faith and love, and over anything else, _hope_.

-

Steve stops in Boston, and walks around MIT's campus with his hands in his pockets and the collar of his jacket pulled up high. It's autumn, and everything around him is covered in leaves and shades of gold and brown. Students walk around in groups or pairs, chatting excitedly, or hiding their noses in their scarves, desperate to go home and get warm.

It's easy to picture a younger Tony here, bright and cocky, infinite numbers running inside his head, eager to fit in. Earnest and vulnerable.

He knows how the story goes. Tony shared it with Steve, once: a lonely kid, too brilliant for his own good, and way younger than most of his peers. He learned the hard way the price of trying to please others.

Steve's heart feels constantly sore.

Where are you? Where did you go?

He's chasing little pieces of Tony, all the places that hold his mark. Where would Tony go? What's the last place where he was happy? Where did he feel safe?

Steve looks up to the sky, blinking a couple of times to erase the images of aircrafts and bombs. Tries his hardest to erase the waving Hydra flags from his memory. To purge the visions of a ransacked, desolate world out of his mind and heart.

It's not real, it's not real, it's not real.

He's not used to this, to not trusting his own mind. His own gut. There's another part of him living there, throbbing with darkness and spitefulness, laughing at him. Mocking him.

Steve wants it gone. Wants the last year of his life gone forever, completely erased.

We can't always get what we want, can we? Tony's voice speaks inside his head. He doesn't recall Tony ever saying that, but it _is_ something that Tony would say. Steve can even hear the self-deprecating tone, the lopsided smile. See Tony's sad eyes.

Steve gets up, going back to his bike and the road.

-

He takes Route 1 and makes a stop in Philadelphia, to visit one of the old company's warehouses that Tony used to own. The warehouse has been long demolished and turned into something else, and Steve wonders, a little bit more than frustrated, if this is how it's going to be, if this entire trip will be about him running in circles, looking for answers in all the wrong places, looking for clues that will lead him to Tony, only to see them vanish into thin air.

Tired and frustrated, he stops by a diner and buys a greasy burger, his beard and baseball cap disguising him well. He bites into the hamburger, feeling the softness of the bread and the juicy flavor of the meat, and lets nostalgia take over his senses. This could be him, ten years ago, sitting in a New York City diner next to Tony as he tells Steve about all the things he needs to look forward to in this new, bright and strange future.

Steve's surprised to find himself missing Tony. He's no stranger to missing whatever they used to have together, even if it feels so far away it may as well exist in a completely different reality. No, he misses _Tony_ , the Tony that, once, could have been happy next to Steve. The Tony that /had/ been happy next to him.

When was the last time they had been tender with each other? Steve recalls, vaguely, a birthday party during the year they came together after the war. The year Tony spent lying to Steve.

No. Don't go there, he tells himself. Focus.

His heart beats violently with anger, and he has to breathe deeply. Breathe, until he calms down and his appetite comes back to him.

He needs to let go.

(He can't let go.)

-

The first time Steve kissed Tony, it was at a New Years party. Wanda had left a trail of destruction and loss, and the ground beneath their feet had shaken and crumbled under the weight of her grief. There was a moment, then, when Steve thought things would never be the same, that the Avengers would never reunite.

He was pleasantly surprised when Tony agreed to give them another shot.

The New Avengers were, probably, one of the happiest time periods of Steve's life. Ten seconds after midnight and into the New Year, he kissed Tony as fireworks exploded behind them and their friends hugged each other around the room. No one noticed them. No one saw the way Steve armed himself with courage, tipped Tony's chin towards him and softly pressed their lips together. No one saw the way Tony's long, dark eyelashes fluttered closed and his lips moved against Steve's, unsure and slow at first, as if he couldn't believe the kiss was real.

They parted for air, foreheads resting against each other. Steve opened his eyes and saw-- Tony, smiling, lips flushed and eyes shining, and the endless night behind him, the lights from the fireworks making him glow.

It was the happiest Steve had ever seen him. Their love had been natural, like the obvious continuation of their friendship. They had been to hell and back together, they had risen from the ashes of their old family and managed to resurface, stronger than ever. Closer than ever.

He had held Tony's hand during that whole night after making love to him, their fingers laced together. And the next morning, Steve had /known/ he wanted to wake up next to Tony for the rest of their lives, as he ran his fingers through his dark, messy curls and laughed at his sleepy, disoriented face. He left the bed to make coffee and came back to a slightly more awake Tony, patiently waiting for him under the sheets.

Steve treasures this memory like no other.

(Like many good things in life, they eventually ran out of good mornings.)

-

In the end, he follows his gut, and trusts the parts of Tony he used to know so well.

Steve finds him in Northern California.

Tony has a cabin there among the redwoods, a refuge he and Steve used to visit when they needed time alone. He remembers well the couple of summers they spent there, fucking and sleeping, writing and reading. Steve liked to pretend they were just like any other couple then, young and in love and without the weight of responsibilities on their shoulders.

He parks his bike outside and walks the stairs towards the front door with his heart going a mile per hour, hands sweaty and chest tight.

The last time they saw each other, Steve wasn’t Steve, and Tony wasn’t exactly Tony.

And he remembers perfectly the elation the other him _felt_ at triggering the kill switch and ending the last piece of Tony that still lived. Remembers the pain that hit him as soon as he woke up with his sense of self back and thought of that moment. Thought of Tony lost forever.

Steve laments that _this_ is what it took for him to stop letting his anger reign him. Defeat and destruction and losing himself, and looking desperately for forgiveness he doesn’t deserve.

He knocks on the door and, soon enough, Tony’s there, and Steve completely forgets how to _breathe_.

He’s pale and thin, thinner than he used to be, his legs shake slightly and Steve notices Tony’s supporting himself on the doorframe. They stand in silence for a few seconds until, surprisingly, Tony smiles.

“I must say,” he starts, “of all the people I thought would come knocking here, you're the last one I expected Steve.”

Steve takes a long, deep breath. “Tony, it’s...it’s good to see you.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, voice rough and eyes bright, like he’s finally allowing himself to admit this. “It’s good to see you too.”

Tony steps aside, no questions, no accusations, no yelling. He opens the door for Steve, to his home and his heart like he has done countless times before. Something at the bottom of Steve’s stomach aches and flutters at this idea, at the thought of Tony, of all people, always being ready to give so much without asking for anything in return.

They used to be so _good_.

Steve sits on the couch as Tony offers him water, and he doesn’t take him up on the offer once he notices how stiffly Tony is moving. He takes a seat right in front of Steve, with only a coffee table between them, and looks straight into Steve’s eyes.

“How much do you remember?” he asks.

Steve swallows, a painful knot forming in his throat. “Everything,” he says, voice cracking. Then, tears start coming out of his eyes, and once they start, it’s like Steve can’t stop, as if a dam were opening inside him. He bows his head and weeps.

“It’s okay,” he hears Tony say. “It’s okay,” he repeats, as he sits next to Steve and lays his head on top of his shoulder, resting a gentle hand on one of Steve’s tightly clenched fists. “I’ve got you, Steve.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve rasps. He turns towards Tony and reaches for him, hiding his face in Tony’s lap. Breaks down completely, standing bare in front of him. No more anger. No more lies.

For once, he just wants to come _home_.


End file.
